The
planned construction of an ultra-Orthodox education complex authorized by the
Jerusalem city council last week is sparking concerns of an increasingly tight
Haredi hold on two of the city's northern neighborhoods.

Secular residents of northern Jerusalem have
expressed concern that the three Haredi schools and about 10 preschools due to
be built in Ramat Eshkol will further entrench the extensive ultra-Orthodox
character of the neighborhood. They also said the schools could draw more
Haredim to nearby French Hill.

Rachel Azaria, a city council member:
"Barkat is sacrificing secular residents of French Hill and Ramat Eshkol
in order to placate the extremist Haredi coalition he leads," she said,
adding that the mayor "seems determined when it comes to meeting the
demands of Haredi functionaries."

Tiberias
is not an isolated case. It is part of a growing trend whereby ultra-Orthodox
neighborhoods are being built in the northern region of the country, to help
solve a housing crunch felt among the Haredim.

After
Passover, construction work commences on the Har Yona Gimel neighborhood in
Upper Nazareth; the neighborhood will feature 3,000 housing units for the
Haredi population.

Two other
cities in the region that host growing ultra-Orthodox populations are Carmiel
and Afula. Safed long ago became a favored destination for Haredi residents.

Rabbi
Uri Regev, chairman of Hiddush - Freedom of Religion for Israel, warns about
"the possibility of massive Haredi movement to the north not being
accompanied by a jobs-creation policy. This would mean that Haredi cities, or
cities with growing Haredi populations, would become poverty traps.

Many
aspects of Haredi culture should be celebrated: its piety; its purposeful way
of life; and its joyful emphasis on family, charity, Jewish identity, and
ritual.

But it’s a
community tacking sharply to the right, pushing stringencies ad absurdum and
relying ever more frequently on totalitarian tactics of spying, intimidation,
and fear to keep its members in check.

Zuria’s
film draws a disturbing and deeply human portrait of those dissidents who are
cruelly ejected from its embrace.

Before
most of us ever heard of the small town of Beit Shemesh, Miri Shalem the
orthodox mother of four children and a long-time resident was directing the
town’s JCC. Under her auspices, Haredi women have been exchanging views with
modern orthodox counterparts.

Miri has been organizing discussion groups for
the women of her town using tools for constructive dialogue usually reserved
for debates about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

According
to the rumors, the directors would approach well-known figures and demand a sum
- anywhere from several thousand dollars to NIS 100,000 - in return for
withholding publication of potentially damaging information.

On Sunday, the
police interviewed dozens of people who revealed various details about the
website in past few years.

"This
was the first website to bring sensationalism to the Haredi world," a
senior media expert in the ultra-Orthodox community told Haaretz on Sunday.

Y.
states that on the recording, the CEO of the website is heard saying that he
would immediately remove the posts in exchange for a payment of 12,000 dollars
every month, over the next year. Y. says he requested to think the proposition
over.

Behadrey
Haredim’s continuing dive, now reaching its nadir, might be an achievement for
the conservatives, but it will not be able to block the neo-Haredi movement
gaining strength in the margins of the ultra-Orthodox community.

Ten
years after Behadrey Haredim’s establishment, the movement no longer needs the
legitimacy granted by a lone website in order to formulate a model of a
different Haredi – one who works, studies in an academic institution and surfs
the internet.

A source within United
Torah Judaism told Ynet that "it isn't gloating or hitting someone when
they're down, it is sending a message with a lesson to every rookie politician
who adopts a dialogue of hate against the haredi public – it isn't worth your
while.

It may make a great media slogan, but the public does not accept it, and
yesterday, Kadima voters proved they don't either.

The authors are respectively vice chairman and
chairman of Israel’s Media Watch.

Elements within Israel’s media suffer from what
we could term “cultural autism.” We observe them too often limiting their
coverage to social, political and artistic events which are close to them
culturally and with which they easily identify.

Israel’s most popular newspaper, Israel Hayom,
did not report the death of Rabbi Scheinberg even once.

The
current conundrum should be framed not as a quest for cultural coexistence or
for the forging of common civic values, but rather as one of demography and
ultimately of economics.

The growth
of the ultra-Orthodox population and its limited participation in the workplace
is creating an ever-growing drain on the Israeli economy. Demographic pressure
creates a need for constant expansion, thus bringing Haredi mores beyond the
pale of their enclaves.

This, in
turn, threatens the lifestyle of existing neighborhoods and communities. The
tension in Beit Shemesh is to a great extent the result of Haredi expansion and
the ensuing fear of ultra-Orthodox hegemony in the town.

According to Ma’ariv, the
legal counsel for the zoning board of the Haredi city of Bnei Brak’s is also
the city prosecutor in charge of enforcing the city’s zoning laws and is also a
lawyer in private practice who represents building contractors with interests
in the city. It certainly sounds like a conflict of interest! (Hebrew)

About a year and a half ago, when Israeli ire soared and
300,000 people signed a petition to extend daylight saving time to European dimensions,
Interior Minister Eli Yishai decided to appoint the Kehat committee to
recommend a new daylight saving time.

However, since Yishai
is no political rookie, he saw to it that the committee was composed of people
who suit his religious view of the world.

Committee members
understood it was no longer possible to sell the public the bizarre argument
about easing the fast on Yom Kippur, because in any case the fast lasts 25
hours, and so they invented another theological reason to shorten daylight
saving time.

Even so,
“Passover remains one of the most oppressive holidays for women,” according to
Elana Sztokman, a Jerusalem-based feminist and author of “The Men’s Section:
Orthodox Jewish Men in an Egalitarian World.”

“There are
all kinds of expectations on women to be super cleaners, super cooks and free
for an entire month to do nothing but clean.

As much as you’ll hear rabbis say,
‘You don’t have to work that hard,’ the reality is that Orthodoxy as a culture
depends on the servitude of women.”

Reich is
the archaeologist who has excavated for the longest period of time in
Jerusalum, and is considered one of the top researchers of the city.

The list
of his scholarly accomplishments is long and sheds new light on the city’s
history.

But
alongside the scientific findings, there has been growing political criticism
of Reich and his digs – in particular regarding the fact that he allowed the
settler organization Elad to make use of archaeology to “Judaize Silwan” in
East Jerusalem.

An American-born, self-styled “kosher sheriff”
who patrols Israel’s food industry for infractions has a warning for consumers
at the height of the Passover shopping season: Shop at your own risk.

“I believe many residents and visitors are
close to clueless regarding Passover and the laws pertaining to kosher food in
Israel,” says Yechiel Spira, author of the renegade “Jerusalem Kosher News”
blog.

Spira
maintains that his no-holds-barred advice for the Passover consumer comes down
to “vigilance.” Labels and logos are often not what they appear to be, he says,
and various kosher-for-Passover classifications carry with them different
meanings for different ethnic groups − all of which are guided by their own
intricate set of customs.